In the United States, there were over 27,000,000 nonfatal injuries reported as being treated by hospital emergency departments in 2002. The National Safety Council statistics showed 20,400,000 unintentional disability injuries and 99,500 unintentional deaths in the U.S. for that same year. For each of these traumas, there is a period of time known as a “gap.” The gap is that period of time where family, coworkers, or other bystanders with little or no medical training are at the scene of an accident attempting to assist the victim. A national standard shows the average urban response time (the gap) for advanced care is 8.5 minutes. Rural response times have not been established, but they are suspected to be somewhat longer than the average urban response time.
The gap is the most important time period in which to prevent further damage to the victim and help to preserve a victim's life. Victims who receive definitive, necessary and proper care in airway management, choking, bleeding, and management of burns within the first five minutes of injury are more likely to have minimal damage. In some cases, incorrect assistance can cause more damage to the victim than no assistance at all. Thus, an individual at the scene of an accident with limited knowledge and resources makes crucial decisions that can positively or negatively affect human life.
The American Red Cross has identified that even people who have taken first-aid classes may not remember what to do in an emergency situation. Their studies have shown that the retention rate of the skills covered in a first-aid class decreases after six weeks and is likely gone after six months. This lack of retention is magnified when the stress and panic of an actual trauma is presented. It is, therefore, crucial that the person administering the assistance stay calm so as to better remember what steps to take to help the victim.
Traditional first responder kits are inefficient for several reasons. First, traditional kits provide supplies with only written instructions on their usage. This can either increase the time it takes for the person to provide assistance to the victim, or it can lead to incorrect assistance if the person decides not to read the instructions before administering assistance. Second, traditional kits do not organize supplies by type of trauma; rather, they package supplies together with like supplies. For example, rubber gloves and band-aids are packaged together with various sized gloves and assorted band-aids even though the entire box will not be used during one trauma. This packaging system can add to confusion for the person administering the first aid because the person may not remember what supplies or medications should be used to treat the trauma. Finally, traditional kits do not assist in helping to calm the person administering the aid or provide immediate prompting as to how to address the trauma situation or multiple situations. This can lead to incorrect actions by the person administering the first aid, or it may decrease the chances that a bystander will remember what to do for the trauma situation.
There are several known devices which are directed toward first-aid kits. These devices include U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/140,462 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,850,630 and 6,460,702. Some of these devices disclose a means for providing audio instructions to the caregiver which help the caregiver remember how to provide assistance to victims in certain trauma situations. The problem with these devices is that they do not offer the ability to prioritize which trauma is most important when the victim has sustained multiple traumas. In other words, an inexperienced caregiver may tell the device to give instructions for bleeding when proper medical procedure would actually call for the caregiver to be doing CPR on the victim first. Further, the devices disclosed in these patents are inefficient because they require the user to turn them on and then correctly select the instructions for the appropriate trauma. In the stress of an emergency situation, it is likely that the user will make a mistake and incorrectly press buttons on the console, which can cause more harm to the victim because more time passes before the first aid is administered.
Therefore, there is a need for a medical supply kit that is able to help laypersons calmly and efficiently provide assistance to a victim or several victims in an emergency situation and prioritizes the severity of the victims' traumas in a multiple trauma situation.